Robot is currently
ONLINE
|
After way too long of a delay, the PumaPaint site is back
online! But alas, it is the Thanksgiving break (4 days) and I
fear for the safety of my old bear of a robot. After being off
for over 6 months it came to life with a disturbing electrical
buzz. In other regards the software is operational again and the
robot is painting. If often takes a few weeks to make the brush
handling more reliable and the paint itself is a but dried out. I
will have the site online again most of the time I am in the building
during the day, so I can see if I can get to the bottom of the
electrical buzz.
|
iHands
|
I will send you your painting via US Postal
Service. It's free, all you gotta do is e-mail me and ask .
Interested in monkeying with
PumaPaint? Feel free to download the java
source code
of the PumaPaint interface. You will have to re-compile as an
application, but otherwise any application can connect to the PumaPaint
port and issue commands. Please also feel free to fix any bugs
you find!
A paper describing the PumaPaint
project, my interactions with the AOL User and the move to three
dimensions will be presented at the 2005 International Conference on
Robotics and Automation. Follow
the link and you can download the PDF version of the paper.
Important Caveat: Interface uses Java2/Swing,
some browsers may require the free plug-in !
We regretfully find ourselves ahead of the curve regarding
browser compatibility. The plug-in available by following this link to Sun Microsystems
worked for me, but I am in no position to guarantee its performance on
every computer.
We upgraded the interface to Java2 Swing because it seemed like
a good idea, not knowing that many (most?) installed browsers do not support Java2/Swing. If you get a
blank gray box, or the downloading says done and you see nothing, your
browser probably doesn't support Java2. I installed the full
version of Netscape 7 and everything works
without the need to install a plug-in. I apologize
for this, I am hopeful that passing time will help this problem go away.
Questions, concerns , problems, complaints, criticism or
compliments? Please send me (Matthew Stein) e-mail at: mstein@rwu.edu.
About the camera applet:
The camera applet was developed by A. Ryan Tiebout as an
independent study project. We use two Hauppage WinTV-GO cards,
for which the Linux drivers work flawlessly. The cameras are
small
CCD cameras capable of NTSC output. The software is based on
w3cam
(we would like to provide proper credit and link to source, but the
link http://home.pages.de/~rasca/w3cam/
appears to be broken).
The new room camera is a Aiptek PenCam and we are grateful to
the many authors of pencam2-0.67 for their excellent software. We
are using the pencam2 package as it came with only very minor
modifications. The images acquired by pencam2 are viewed in the
camera applet
we previously developed.
You can view online camera images with the Camera
Applet created by A. Ryan Tiebout.
We
are inviting the public to use the PumaPaint
interface . We are curious as to what you will do with the
ability to create unique and personally identifiable artifacts on the
World Wide Web. We are hoping users will attempt to create
interesting artwork as opposed to just writing their name, swear words
or "Hello". However, don't let this discourage you if you want to try
it just to see what it's like. In return for your participation, we will send you your artwork via
US Postal Service if you provide a mailing address.
We have a full range of motions which can be used to
paint. We currently control 4 similar brushes in 4 different colors of
paint. We have a pressure setting that controls the pressure the
robot exerts on the canvas , and live video from two color cameras.
One camera is on the robot for a close-up view of the
canvas or the paint jars. This camera allows users to position
the arm near any specific point on the canvas, obtaining a "custom
view". You are able to view the robot in two
different ways:
- View the canvas via a static JPEG image from:
- View the canvas via our Java applet! - The applets can
be launched to the desktop, where you can watch the robot all day long!
Some important notes:
- The Java interface requires a fairly high performance
computer to move faster than a snail's pace. We would not
recommend trying this on slower than a 120Mz
pentium or equivalent. A high speed communication link is NOT
required, however the applet might take a long time initially to load.
- We have found that Java simply does not work
on certain combinations of Platforms/Operating
Systems/Browsers.
- Although you may look at the on-line cameras
or load the interface any time, the interface won't do
anything unless the robot is physically powered up.
- If you want private access to the robot, please send me e-mail specifying the time
and date you want access. I will issue you a unique
password via return e-mail.
Additional things to be aware of:
- We reserve the right to save digital images of all
artwork and use these images on this or other web sites and in
publications. We will not make commercial use of any artwork
created.
- We reserve the right to use the personal names of users for
attributing artwork on this or other web
sites and in publications.
Some technical notes:
- The Java2 interface uses the swing toolkit and was
compiled using j2sdk 1.3.1 for Linux.
- The robot server has a 20 minute inactivity timeout, meaning the
communications socket will be closed if a valid command packet has not
arrived in 20 minutes. This was necessary because AOL remained
connected long after the user apparently lost interest. It is possible,
however, that a user simply waiting for an image update or deciding
what to do next will be disconnected. If this happens please select the
"Reconnect" button.
- The stop() method of the PumaPaint applet disconnects from the
robot and closes the communications socket so that users simply
pressing the "Back" button of the browser do not stay connected. As an
unfortunate side effect, a resize action will also cause a disconnect
from the robot. If this happens please select the "Reconnect" button.
- As a last line of defense, the robot's environment is wired with
pressure sensitive power cut-off switches.
The robot may occasionally trip these switches during normal dip or
brush handling operations (we apologize if this stops anyone from
completing a painting). Human intervention will be required to re-start
the robot.
This new interface was developed by Michael Coristine , RWU CS
student. Send him your praise or complaints!
Our goal is assist you in controlling the robot to
perform an intricate and potentially subtle physical interaction. To do
this the interface mimics some aspects of the painting task. No
computer model could perfectly predict the outcome of this complex
physical interaction. So these effects are intended more as operator
aids than predictors of
the result. For example, you may notice the interface paints the canvas
as a blotch rather than a straight, sharp line. This is to indicate
that
the real interaction is likely to be blotchy, and not a prediction of
what
the actual blotch will look like.
The Puma Paint interface is a Java
web applet that maintains communications with the motion server program
throughout the life of user's control. All commands are exchanged
real-time with the server program, effecting the robot. Real-time
control over a distance will cause latency problems, resulting in the
robot always being seconds, and sometimes tens of seconds behind the
operator's command. Adding to this latency is the ability of the
user to issue commands much faster than the robot is capable of
carrying them out. For example, it takes the robot about 20 seconds to
perform
a dip operation, initiated by a mouse click taking a fraction of a
second.
This project started with Dr. Matt Stein's Unimation
Corp. Puma 760 robot in the CAE lab at Wilkes
University (2 hours north of Philadelphia). He needed a
platform independent interface to control the robot, for demonstrating
control topics to a wide audience. His chosen task: painting.
So, Dr. Stein talked to Pete DePasquale whom
he worked with at Sonalysts, Inc. for a short time. Pete started
thinking about using the Java language to create a web-based platform
to control the robot, so he went to Dr. John Lewis at
Villanova Univ. (where
Pete was a graduate student), and told him the idea. Dr. Lewis
loved it, and we recruited Lara Blatchford , also
a graduate student at Villanova. Together, they went to see Dr. Stein's
robot at Wilkes at talk about the interface. Then they returned to
Villanova and started designing the interface.
When Pete finished his Master's project
the interface
was almost complete. Dr. Stein finished the interface and launched the
site
in June 1998. Of course, visitors were sparse in the early days (you
would
have to go looking for it), but there was enough of a trickle of users
that
I could find and fix bugs and fine tune the painting and brush-handling
fixtures.
Much of the initial traffic came from link placed by my friend Ken
Taylor
on Austrailia's Telerobot
on
the Web. By August 1998 the interface was fairly reliable and was
used
without furthur modification for the life of the Wilkes site.
Wilkes University canned me in 1998 when some fools
locked themselves in a room and decided the ills of the university
could be cured by firing all untenured engineers. I came to Roger
Williams University in 1999 but the original robot and computers
belonged to WIlkes so I had to shut down the site. There was no
one with the capability or inclination at Wilkes to keep it going.
It took me two years to recreate a working
robotics laboratory at Roger Williams
University School of Engineering, Computing and Construction
Management. Grateful thanks to NASA JPL for donating the surplus
Puma 560 and the RWU Research Foundation for funding the
equipment expenses. Aside from the working robot, this project was
assisted by A. Ryan Tiebout for the camera drivers and applet, Michael
Coristine for the Java2 interface, and Christopher Madden for the
gripper and physical fixtures. The site has been
back online on August 19, 2002 after 2&1/3 years offline.
A paper describing the PumaPaint project will be presented at
the 2005 International
Conference on Robotics and Automation.
We are planning on going to three dimensional manipulation. The
idea is to have a
pair of hand-like manipulators arranged in opposition around a blob af
modeling clay. We want to see if it is possible to control
complex manipulation via the Internet.
Special thanks to the RWU Research Foundation for funding the initial
efforts in developing the experimental platform.
Dr. Peter DePasquale is
now a faculty member at the College of
New Jersey.
This page was last modified on Thu May 15 12:18:52 EDT
2003 by Matthew Stein
